Mike Huckabee and Israel’s radical settler movement are almost always fodder for a good laugh. I thank Ofer Neiman for providing one in the form of an Arutz Sheva article, in which settler MK Nissim Zeev brags about his friendship with Mike Huckabee, who he brought to Israel and hosted last week. Among the other things Huckabee did was tour and nod approvingly at the Judaization project in East Jerusalem’s Palestinian neighborhoods.

In this photo, he’s pictured addressing a settler yeshiva established with the lucre of Miami-based bingo magnate Irving Moskowitz. Moskowitz is the very one who stole the Palestinian Shepherd Hotel and partially demolished it last week so he can move in some settler families. I guess no one told Huckabee that this project flies directly in the face of current U.S. policy as does supporting settler thugs guilty of promoting violence and hooliganism against Palestinians and Jews alike.

But I reserve the biggest laugh for Zeev’s recounting of his discussions with his pal, Mike, who the reporter erroneously credits with being a U.S. senator:

I got together with him to pursue two issues: [international] recognition of Jewish refugees from Arab lands and recognition by the UN of Israel with the status of “indigenous.” It’s unacceptable that after 2,000 years of exile, we are still characterized as “occupiers.” Since 2007, there are peoples recognized by the UN as indigenous. The U.S. also recognizes Indians as indigenous and if it won’t return to them their ancestral lands it will offer reparations. We too require similar recognition. Our connection to the land appears in the Bible and we are connected to this land no less than the Indians.

In fact, I’d suggest as a terrific photo-op that Mike bring together a settler chief and an Indian chief and they can both compare war stories. Maybe the settlers can set up shop on a few reservations and teach tribal leaders who to expand their “settlements” by annexing land belonging to white folk, and force the U.S. government to recognize their land thefts. I’m sure that’ll go over big in Washington.

Ya gotta hand it to Zeev though, he’s a real joker:

MK Zeev noted that Israel has many friends in the UN and Congress who have only to be asked to make the changes he’s proposing. I visited Congress, where we have many friends, and many told me it was unfortunate that Israel didn’t make this demand [of Congress].

Zeev said that Huckabee promised to do everything in his power to bring this proposal before the UN…

Go ahead, Mike. What’s stopping you? You’re a U.S. senator, aren’t you? Bring forward a ‘sense of the senate’ resolution recognizing Israeli Jews as indigenous. Maybe one of the long-lost Indian tribes? And while you’re at it let’s get Congress to allocate a few billions in reparation for Jews who suffered an “Arab Holocaust” and were expelled from their native lands. A Jewish Nakba. Of our very own. Why should only Arabs get to have one? Just doesn’t seem fair. If they get to suffer, why not us as well?

Mike’s not above a little mirth as well. Among the pithy statements he made while in the Holy Land preparing for Armageddon were that he believed in a Palestinian state, just not in Israel. Which at first glance might appear to be a conventional endorsement of the two state solution…until you realize that Huckabee embraces the settler narrative that all of Greater Israel including Palestine is Israel. So he’s in effect telling Palestinians and his own U.S. government to move Palestine somewhere like, say Uganda. Where have we heard that one before?

From Richard Silverstein’s Tikun Olam. A portrait of a misguided young American Jewish Settler. Imagine if he had been a young American Muslim there would be hackles raised about “homegrown terrorism.”

Haaretz is reporting that an American born-again Orthodox Jew, Ephraim Khantsis, has received a military order expelling him from the West Bank for six months for expressing solidarity with Jack Teitel and his terrorist acts against Palestinians. Though he was enrolled in the Machon Meir Yeshiva, he spent most of his time since making aliyah to Israel four months ago at the Kfar Tapuach settlement, a hotbed of Kahanist extremism. It was there that residents reported him.

With some key help from the intrepid Sol Salbe, I’ve learned quite a bit about our Kahane-wannabe. He recently graduated from SUNY Stony Brook with a degree in computer science. He grew up in Bensonhurst, known as a tough neighborhood filled with Syrian and Russian Jews.

He was profiled back in September in quite an unlikely place, Conde Nast’s Details Magazine, where he made the rather startling confession, even before becoming an Israeli citizen, that he would shoot IDF soldiers who came to remove him from the extremist enclave where he intended to make his home:

…There’s a pledge Khantsis makes, one that it’s also possible to hear from Americans already living in settlements, that might be more troubling to Israeli authorities: If the Israeli military comes to remove him from his new home—and many in Israel believe such an event is likely—he will not leave peacefully.“I would fight against it with all my strength, and I would leave nothing back to try to stop it,” says the slim young man wearing a black yarmulke. He speaks so softly that at times it’s hard to hear him. “If they use violence, then we’re justified doing the same.” Would that include using a gun? “Yes,” he says. Is he absolutely sure that he would use a weapon against Israeli soldiers? “That’s right. I strongly hope it would never come to that,” he says. But “if they’re already shooting us, I’d have no option. I don’t think the right thing to do is turn the other cheek. It’s not a Jewish thing to do.”

The entire story is a real eye-opener as it chronicles other hard-core Hilltop Youth and their forays into violent insurrection against the secular Israeli state. I got a dark laugh from the thought that the Shin Bet can do some of its best intelligence work by reading glossy American men’s magazines. In this day and age, even wannabe terrorists maintain social networking profiles. He has a Facebook account, where his political views are listed as “Kach” and religious views are listed as “fundamentalist.” One thing you have to hand to him: at least he’s honest. He lists his hometown as “Belgorod Dnestrovskiy, Ukraine.”

I am sorry to say that Khantsis’ Ukrainian origin fits with the fact that many former Soviet Jews came to Israel and America with hardline anti-Communist views which translated into hardline nationalist political views supporting the Likud (in Israel) and parties even farther to the right (like Kach for one). When Avigdor Lieberman first made aliyah he too made common cause with Kach.

Among the Facebook pages he features are those of Nadia Matar, the Women in Green settler extremist who called for Mahmoud Abbas assassination at a Manhattan synagogue; and Ketzeleh Katz, settler Knesset member featured here in a YouTube video foaming at the mouth against the Israeli TV satire program, Eretz Nehederet; Kahane Tzadak (“Kahane was right”); Mike Huckabee, darling of the settler extremists; and the settler news portal, Arutz Sheva.

He lists his profession as “web designer,” which somehow seems fitting in this age of internet terrorism. He has a Twitter account aptly named, Doom7777. Seems to have had a fantatical devotion to Gilad Shalit (“Kidnapping, terrorizing, fanatical monsters will not succeed to subdue the Zionist State!”) and his freedom, though he pretty much stopped tweeting once he made aliya.

So this is the cream of American Jewish youth, our latter-day Zionist chalutzim who, like our European grandparents, came to build the land and make it bloom–with settlements, barbed wire, attack dogs, M-16s and hate. When are we going to wake up and realize this isn’t a Zionist dream, it is a nightmare. And in order to prevent the nightmare from turning into a cataclysm, we must crack down on this aberrant form of Jewishness and Zionism. We must destroy these movements and ideas. If neither the Israeli nor American governments takes firmer action they will have only themselves to blame for the consequences. We have seen what the Jack Teitels can do even with his solo reign of terror. Imagine what an entire movement of Teitels can do with some ingenuity and intestinal fortitude. All they have to do is think a little bigger, get someone with the vision of an Osama bin Laden. That would be all it would take for some real mayhem.

Haaretz notes that this military expulsion order is one of the most severe measures at the disposal of the military authorities in dealing with extremist settlers. There are currently three such orders in effect against residents of Yitzhar.

The actions taken against Khantsis bring home once again the necessity for the U.S. government to do a better job of monitoring the radical pro-settler movement in this country and the necessity for clamping down on fundraising here on behalf of extremist settlements like Yitzhar and Kfar Tapuach among many others.

For some odd reason Haaretz English omitted Khantsis’ name from its English language report, but not from the Hebrew edition.

Right-wing spokesmen, including some elected officials, rushed to place Yaakov “Jack” Teitel in the fringe group alongside Yigal Amir, Eden Natan Zada, Eliran Golan, Asher Weisgan, Danny Tikman and a few other “political/ideological” murderers.

True, they acknowledge, there are among us several lunatic rabbis who agitate to violence. Really, just a handful; even a toddler could count them.

The more stringent will note that unlike the Hamas government, our government does not pay the salaries of rabbis who advocate the killing of babies.

Is that so? Not really.

For example, government ministries regularly transfer support and funding to a yeshiva whose rabbi determined that it is permissible to kill gentile babies “because their presence assists murder, and there is reason to harm children if it is clear that they will grow up to harm us … it is permissible to harm the children of a leader in order to stop him from acting evilly … we have seen in the Halakha that even babies of gentiles who do not violate the seven Noahide laws, there is cause to kill them because of the future threat that will be caused if they are raised to be wicked people like their parents.”

Lior Yavne, who oversees research at the Yesh Din human rights organization, checked and found that in 2006-2007, the Ministry of Education department of Torah institutions transferred over a million shekels to the Od Yosef Hai yeshiva in Yitzhar.

The Ministry of Social Affairs has allocated over 150,000 shekels to the yeshiva since 2007, scholarships for students with financial difficulties studying there. And what can they learn with the help of public funding from the head of the yeshiva, Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira? According to selected items published last week in the media, the boys can learn that Teitel is not only innocent, but also a real saint.

Their spiritual leader stated in his book, “Torat Hamelekh” that “a national decision is not necessary in order to permit the shedding of blood of an evil kingdom. Even individuals from the afflicted kingdom can attack them.”

A brochure distributed in Judean and Samarian communities stated that “needless to say that nowhere in the book does it state that these remarks are aimed only at gentiles in ancient times.”

The commandments in the book do not suffice only with gentiles; you can also find in them approval to attack leftist professors: every citizen in the kingdom opposing us who encourages the fighters or expresses satisfaction with their actions is considered a pursuer and his killing is permissible,” wrote the rabbi and adds, “and also considered a pursuer is someone whose remarks weaken our kingdom or have a similar effect.”

Not long ago, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman announced that he would ask European Union countries to halt their support for the Breaking the Silence organization because he was displeased with their publications.

The minister surely has reservations about the rabbi’s publications.

He is invited to approach his colleagues at the Ministry of Education and at the Ministry of Social Affairs.

Right-wing spokesmen, including some elected officials, rushed to place Yaakov “Jack” Teitel in the fringe group alongside Yigal Amir, Eden Natan Zada, Eliran Golan, Asher Weisgan, Danny Tikman and a few other “political/ideological” murderers.

True, they acknowledge, there are among us several lunatic rabbis who agitate to violence. Really, just a handful; even a toddler could count them.

The more stringent will note that unlike the Hamas government, our government does not pay the salaries of rabbis who advocate the killing of babies.

Is that so? Not really.

For example, government ministries regularly transfer support and funding to a yeshiva whose rabbi determined that it is permissible to kill gentile babies “because their presence assists murder, and there is reason to harm children if it is clear that they will grow up to harm us … it is permissible to harm the children of a leader in order to stop him from acting evilly … we have seen in the Halakha that even babies of gentiles who do not violate the seven Noahide laws, there is cause to kill them because of the future threat that will be caused if they are raised to be wicked people like their parents.”

Lior Yavne, who oversees research at the Yesh Din human rights organization, checked and found that in 2006-2007, the Ministry of Education department of Torah institutions transferred over a million shekels to the Od Yosef Hai yeshiva in Yitzhar.

The Ministry of Social Affairs has allocated over 150,000 shekels to the yeshiva since 2007, scholarships for students with financial difficulties studying there. And what can they learn with the help of public funding from the head of the yeshiva, Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira? According to selected items published last week in the media, the boys can learn that Teitel is not only innocent, but also a real saint.

Their spiritual leader stated in his book, “Torat Hamelekh” that “a national decision is not necessary in order to permit the shedding of blood of an evil kingdom. Even individuals from the afflicted kingdom can attack them.”

A brochure distributed in Judean and Samarian communities stated that “needless to say that nowhere in the book does it state that these remarks are aimed only at gentiles in ancient times.”

The commandments in the book do not suffice only with gentiles; you can also find in them approval to attack leftist professors: every citizen in the kingdom opposing us who encourages the fighters or expresses satisfaction with their actions is considered a pursuer and his killing is permissible,” wrote the rabbi and adds, “and also considered a pursuer is someone whose remarks weaken our kingdom or have a similar effect.”

Not long ago, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman announced that he would ask European Union countries to halt their support for the Breaking the Silence organization because he was displeased with their publications.

The minister surely has reservations about the rabbi’s publications.

He is invited to approach his colleagues at the Ministry of Education and at the Ministry of Social Affairs.

Yaakov (James) Teitel, a Jewish settler in the West Bank has with glee and happiness reveled in the murders he committed against innocent Palestinians. Showing no remorse for the slayings, he justified the carnage he wrought by declaring, “I know God is pleased.” This deranged attitude and action represents a man who does not represent Judaism, but what if he were a Muslim how swiftly would Islam be blamed and Muslims cast under suspicion?

The Jerusalem District Prosecutor’s Office on Thursday charged alleged Jewish terrorist Yaakov (Jack) Teitel with two murders, three attempted murders and other acts of violence.

“It was a pleasure and an honor to serve my God,” said Teitel at the Jerusalem courthouse. “I have no regret and no doubt that God is pleased.”

Teitel also denied recent reports that he had operated as an undercover Shin Bet agent.
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Teitel, 37, born in Florida but a resident of the northern West Bank settlement of Shvut Rahel since 1997, was arrested last month for suspected murder and for his alleged role in a string of attempted murder plots, according to details of an investigation revealed after a gag order on the case was lifted.

He was arrested on October 7 and police said he later confessed to most of the allegations against him.

The indictment charges that Teitel smuggled a disassembled firearm into Israel from the United States in 1997 by placing it in a video player, and used that gun to murder taxi driver Samir Akram Balbisi in June of that year.

According to the indictment, in August 2007, Teitel murdered Issa Jabrin, a Palestinian shepherd from Susya, after which he fled Israel for three years.

The indictment also lists Teitel’s efforts for more than a decade to harm Arabs, gays and lesbians, leftists, police officers and messianic Jews.

Teitel had admitted to, among other offences, sending a booby-trapped Purim gift basket to a family of messianic Jews in Ariel, which seriously wounded their teenage son, Ami Ortiz, and planting a pipe bomb at the Jerusalem residence of Prof. Ze’ev Sternhell, who was lightly wounded.

At this stage, however, Teitel will not be charged with the murder of two policemen in the Jordan Valley eight months ago. While police also suspect him of this crime, they do not yet have enough evidence to charge him with it.

Earlier in the week the Petah Tikva Magistrate’s Court extended his remand for another three days – and, for the first time since his arrest on October 7, Teitel himself appeared in court for the hearing. The Shin Bet security service had barred him from attending previous remand hearings.

During the hearing, Teitel’s lawyer protested the difficult conditions of his imprisonment, saying he was chained to his bed 24 hours a day. The court ordered the Shin Bet to look into this complaint.